Re: anti-cheating

[bruno]

You should have a look a Wims. It seems like it does most of your
requirements:
http://wims.unice.fr/wims/wims.cgi?lang=en&+session=UVA84EAD95.1&;
+module=home

Le lundi 12 janvier 2009 à 11:35 +0800, Carlos Nazareno a écrit :
> > Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper
> > necessary for a school quiz??
> 
> When they are not available.
> 
> I've thought of a good method to do quizzes and eliminate cheating at
> the same time:
> 
> - For tests like multiple choice/true or false
> - Browser-based frontend where exam is served
> - Backend (PHP/MySQL?) serves randomized questions and answers to
> render typical cheating methods obsolete.
> - Have time limit for students to answer quiz, after which session will time 
> out
> - Saves teacher time on having to manually check test papers
> - Scales all the way up to college level
> - Can be used for entrance tests and other large-scale exams
> - Platform independent, thus making any work we do on this
> forward-compatible and usable by practically everyone who has a
> net-enabled computer
> - Can be used by mobile phones that have web browsers
> - Can be used for remote testing of learning
> 
> - I'd also like to see more work done on a method to easily bundle
> Gnash or HTML-based/Browser applications as stand-alone activities, or
> at least launch the browser with the wrapped activity loaded upon
> startup.
> - Using a local daemon or service of some sort, the method I
> previously outlined can also be used here for "standalone" mode of the
> tests. This way, the learner can also practice with them and learn
> outside of class hours.
> - consider a system with multiple correct answers/alternate phrasing
> of correct answers is also used (but serve only 1 "tagged as correct"
> answer per multiple-choice question) to better test learning of
> concepts. This way, student will be less prone to the weakness of rote
> memorization.
> 
> Your thoughts, guys?
> 
> All the best,
> 
> -Naz
> 

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HTML-based/Browser apps (was Re: anti-cheating)

[S Page]

Carlos Nazareno wrote:

> - I'd also like to see more work done on a method to easily bundle
> Gnash or HTML-based/Browser applications as stand-alone activities, or
> at least launch the browser with the wrapped activity loaded upon
> startup.

See the Help activity in 8.2.0, it instantiates the WebView from hulahop 
that underlies Browse and points it at help/XO_Introduction.html.

But is it so bad to make your "HTML-based application" an installable 
collection that shows up in the "OLPC Library" navigation on the Browse 
home page?  See .  Just 
because most library content is static non-interactive ebook material is 
no reason really cool browser apps shouldn't go in the OLPC Library.

One thing that might make collections more appealing and feel like 
applications is if the collection's library.info icon (which seems 
otherwise unused?!) or the web site's favicon would appear in the 
Journal instead or as well as the generic globe icon of Browse.  I filed 
a confused ticket #9188 for this enhancement.

> - Using a local daemon or service of some sort, the method I
> previously outlined can also be used here for "standalone" mode of the
> tests. This way, the learner can also practice with them and learn
> outside of class hours.

The WikiBrowse activity (WikipediaEN.activity on G1G1 8.2 laptops) 
starts a local python Web server and fires up a WebActivity (Browse) 
instance pointing at it.

Better, Browse's engine is XULRunner 1.9 and it has support for most of 
the HTML 5 offline application spec 
.
E.g. http://starkravingfinkle.org/projects/offline/todo.html is an 
expanding form you can fill out while offline that will update the web 
server when next online.  It should work on an XO (I can't try it, my 
wireless router is bust! :-( ).

I concur with where you're going.  *Never* ever bet against the browser. 
  Browse or a custom WebView activity can do everything that Firefox 3 
can do, without worrying about compatibility with abysmal MS Internet 
Explorer that's keeping the web stuck in 2004.
E.g. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/FindTheCountry -- why bother with crappy 
static PDF atlases when interactive technology like that is available? 
And you can View > Source it!

Cheers,
--
=S Page
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Re: administrative security

[Mikus Grinbergs]

> ... are mechanisms in place to
> prevent students from installing unauthorized apps, or malware?

That is a social issue - how can kids be motivated to do 
"acceptable" things, and forgo "immoral" ones ??


I am much more concerned about how to prevent *adults*.  The 
original thought was that if an OLPC were stolen, it would 
eventually "de-activate" unless refreshed by the school's server.

But lately, "OS on a stick" have become available for the OLPC.  If 
I were in an armed gang (and authority were weak), I would "hold up" 
a school, confiscate all the OLPCs, reload them with software that 
did not have "security features", then sell those systems for cash.


mikus

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Re: child protection + anti-cheating

[Wade Brainerd]

Something I hope will end up in Sugar someday are more classroom
management tools.

Maine's Apple-based classroom laptop system gives the teacher the
ability to remotely watch the screens of all the kids in the room.  No
need to stand at the back of the classroom.

Just the knowledge that the teacher is capable of doing this is
usually enough to keep kids from IMing answers to each other.

Perhaps a 'Classroom' activity will make it onto the AT proposals list :)

-Wade

On 1/10/09, Martin Langhoff  wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Chris Ball  wrote:
>>   > How do we prevent cheating between students?
>>
>> You can't prevent this.
>
> Exactly. I've been working with online tools for education for ~8
> years now, and it's interesting to note - paper+pen technology does
> not prevent cheating either.
>
> A few times I've been confronted with "this cannot possibly be used in
> education until there is no way of cheating with it", ignoring that
> books, pen and paper are *great* for cheating. And also for smuggling
> questionable printed materials into school too -- books and folders
> can hide magazines with porn or political manifestos.
>
> Ban paper, put anyone who owns a printer in jail :-)
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> martin
> --
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: administrative security

[Noah Kantrowitz]

On Jan 11, 2009, at 11:28 PM, Carlos Nazareno wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM,   wrote:
>> Physical access to the system gives full access, especially once the
>> developer key is obtained, to install applications that their  
>> teachers
>> or government had not considered.  The system considers the user to  
>> be
>> the authorisation authority.
>
> so does that mean that XO OS ships with all the kids having admin  
> accounts?
>
>> If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they  
>> should be
>> checked for.
>
> how about after deployment?
>
> like setting user permissions to prevent kids from installing  
> unauthorized apps?

You use the term "authorized" without defining it. What constitutes an  
"authorized" application? OLPC itself has steered clear of this job,  
since it is a political minefield. Governments are certainly an  
option, but this also makes censorship a major concern. The teachers  
at an individual school are probably less likely to engage in mass  
censorship, but also lack a lot of the technical knowledge and time to  
deal with these kinds of issues. The children themselves are probably  
the best place to determine this, but they also (moreso at first) will  
lack much of the technical sophistication to really know what is  
malware and what isn't. Bitfrost was always supposed to provide at  
least some form of a barrier, but I think it hasn't really fulfilled  
its original design in a lot of ways. So we are left with the status  
quo; users have final say, but the default policy for most things is  
"accept".

--Noah

PS: Questions like this are probably better suited to the security list.
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Re: administrative security

[James Cameron]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:28:41PM +0800, Carlos Nazareno wrote:
> so does that mean that XO OS ships with all the kids having admin
> accounts?

In deployments, the XO ships in a locked state with an activation
security system for theft reduction.

The operating system builds used by a deployment team are up to them,
they may customise, but if they base it on the OLPC builds then the
Terminal activity grants them full access (a "root" prompt), and the
virtual text console does the same.

You can verify this by running the OLPC builds yourself.

> > If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they should be
> > checked for.
> 
> how about after deployment?
> like setting user permissions to prevent kids from installing
> unauthorized apps?

I specifically mean in the context of a deployment in progress, which
includes support and ongoing monitoring by the deployment team.
Deployment involvement for a child would end when they leave school.
After deployment, if the child keeps the laptop, they would have full
authority over it, and presumably no longer be cared for by the
deployment monitoring systems.

-- 
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Re: administrative security

[Chris Ball]

Hi Carlos,

   > Anyway, default installation of XO OS gives easy access to admin
   > controls. This just a G1G1 thing, or is this something that's
   > disabled by default?

We intentionally give admin controls to children; we are trying to
encourage them to explore, create, and solve problems with their
machines.  If they break something, the school can keep a USB key
available for quick reflashes via holding down all four game keys,
or the student can hold down the O key to boot into their previous
build from olpc-update.  I hope we will soon have a key to hold
down at boot that restores you to the root filesystem as it was
before your modifications, too, as an "undo button".

The children do not, in fact, regularly get malware, hacked, or stop
their machine from booting through installing unauthorized software,
so I don't think this is a large problem -- certainly not one worth
crippling the machines from being able to install new software for.
The "undo button" functionality or olpc-update's "boot into previous
build" are sufficient to mitigate the sort of problems you're thinking
of, though.

Personally, I'd encourage deployments to continue to give root access
to their children:  there are other laptops that are designed to be
locked-down and restricted, but this one is not one of them, and the
combination of totally open-source software and restrictions on
installing or modifying software do not mix well together.

Thanks,

- Chris.
-- 
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Re: administrative security

[Carlos Nazareno]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM,   wrote:
> Physical access to the system gives full access, especially once the
> developer key is obtained, to install applications that their teachers
> or government had not considered.  The system considers the user to be
> the authorisation authority.

so does that mean that XO OS ships with all the kids having admin accounts?

> If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they should be
> checked for.

how about after deployment?

like setting user permissions to prevent kids from installing unauthorized apps?

thx

-n

-- 
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http://twitter.com/naz404
http://www.object404.com
--
interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
http://www.zengraffiti.com
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User Group Manager
Phlashers: Philippine Flash ActionScripters
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Re: anti-cheating

[Noah Kantrowitz]

On Jan 11, 2009, at 11:06 PM, Jeffrey Kesselman wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Carlos Nazareno  
>  wrote:
>>> Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper
>>> necessary for a school quiz??
>>
>> When they are not available.
>
> Im confused if the basic necessities like paper and a pencil arent
> available, what is any responsible government
> doing spending even $200 a child on computers??  Not to mention the
> infrastructure to support them?
>
> Sorry, it just seems really really ass-backward to me.

A laptop can be written on for a child's entire school career. A  
single piece of paper only works once and then must be discarded  
(maybe composted at best).

--Noah
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Re: anti-cheating

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Carlos Nazareno  wrote:
>> Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper
>> necessary for a school quiz??
>
> When they are not available.

Im confused if the basic necessities like paper and a pencil arent
available, what is any responsible government
doing spending even $200 a child on computers??  Not to mention the
infrastructure to support them?

Sorry, it just seems really really ass-backward to me.


jk
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Re: anti-cheating

[Martin Langhoff]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Carlos Nazareno  wrote:
> I've thought of a good method to do quizzes and eliminate cheating at
> the same time:

Moodle's mod/quiz can do most (all?) of that. And

 - kids cheat anyway (check in the moodle.org forums for teachers
discussing the cheats...)

 - you can only ask really limited questions in a quiz

...

the real lesson, and this comes from working for a long time in an
education community that uses quizzes lots, is to not take online
(simplistic!) quizzes too seriously (in other words, mix several
evaluation methods to see if kids understand), and to know that
cheating is possible, just like with paper exams.

it's not a technology problem, it's a challenge in the social and
pedagogical space...

cheers,



m


-- 
 martin.langh...@gmail.com
 mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: administrative security

[quozl]

Physical access to the system gives full access, especially once the
developer key is obtained, to install applications that their teachers
or government had not considered.  The system considers the user to be
the authorisation authority.

If specific applications are not welcome in a deployment, they should be
checked for.

(At my primary school it became illegal to use green or red pens.  But
they could never stop us, we just bought them from shops or each other.)

-- 
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administrative security

[Carlos Nazareno]

Hi guys. Just a quick question:

I haven't tinkered with the XO on an admin level, and it's something I
don't plan to do as it's not my forte, but are mechanisms in place to
prevent students from installing unauthorized apps, or malware?
Basically stuff that will destabilize their productivity? (malware ->
linux is not a silver bullet for security, simplest point of failure
is always peopleware -> social engineering. It's so much easier to
hack and program people than inorganic machines.)

Anyway, default installation of XO OS gives easy access to admin
controls. This just a G1G1 thing, or is this something that's disabled
by default?

Best,

-Naz

-- 
Carlos Nazareno
http://twitter.com/naz404
http://www.object404.com
--
interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
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User Group Manager
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Re: anti-cheating

[Carlos Nazareno]

Oh sorry, correction, please scratch "completely eliminate cheating"
as kids are very smart and can always find a way ;P -> in a way, maybe
a form of this that is possitively channeled should be encouraged in
order to nurture lateral thinking? Like MacGyver competitions? Part of
the reason why there's a lot of mess around right now is that there's
not enough thinking out of the box and typical systems oft lazily
foster the production of sheep :-/

Re: Browser-based testing system, one possiblity is to give time
limits on each section which are tight enough that students will not
be able to pass answers to each other since they're randomly given
different problem sets + time limit.

Since time pressure cannot always be applicable or appropriate though,
the randomization of questions and answers will at the very list least
make cheating harder.

Best,

-Naz

-- 
Carlos Nazareno
http://twitter.com/naz404
http://www.object404.com
--
interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
http://www.zengraffiti.com
--
User Group Manager
Phlashers: Philippine Flash ActionScripters
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Re: anti-cheating

[Carlos Nazareno]

> Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper
> necessary for a school quiz??

When they are not available.

I've thought of a good method to do quizzes and eliminate cheating at
the same time:

- For tests like multiple choice/true or false
- Browser-based frontend where exam is served
- Backend (PHP/MySQL?) serves randomized questions and answers to
render typical cheating methods obsolete.
- Have time limit for students to answer quiz, after which session will time out
- Saves teacher time on having to manually check test papers
- Scales all the way up to college level
- Can be used for entrance tests and other large-scale exams
- Platform independent, thus making any work we do on this
forward-compatible and usable by practically everyone who has a
net-enabled computer
- Can be used by mobile phones that have web browsers
- Can be used for remote testing of learning

- I'd also like to see more work done on a method to easily bundle
Gnash or HTML-based/Browser applications as stand-alone activities, or
at least launch the browser with the wrapped activity loaded upon
startup.
- Using a local daemon or service of some sort, the method I
previously outlined can also be used here for "standalone" mode of the
tests. This way, the learner can also practice with them and learn
outside of class hours.
- consider a system with multiple correct answers/alternate phrasing
of correct answers is also used (but serve only 1 "tagged as correct"
answer per multiple-choice question) to better test learning of
concepts. This way, student will be less prone to the weakness of rote
memorization.

Your thoughts, guys?

All the best,

-Naz

-- 
Carlos Nazareno
http://twitter.com/naz404
http://www.object404.com
--
interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
http://www.zengraffiti.com
--
User Group Manager
Phlashers: Philippine Flash ActionScripters
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Help me developing for Sugar

[master puppetz]

Hi,
 
My name is Lazim and I'm a student from Malaysia. I am new in open source 
especially in Sugar development. Regard to my proposal at projectdb, I'd like 
to develop an e-mail client called SugarMail. 
 
I'm not sure whether SugarMail is possible to be developed or not, but my 
proposal is to make SugarMail to be an e-mail client that don't required mail 
server for sending e-mail among XO users. It sound ridiculous, but it's not 
imposible.
 
The problem is I don't have enough knowledge about developing a software for 
Sugar and currently I still don't receive my requested XO laptop for me to 
figure out. I've run the Sugar through emulation under the qemu but my laptop 
condition not very good at running 2 operating system simultaneously.
 
I would like to ask for anyone that would help me be my mentor on developing 
this SugarMail. I also appreciate if anybody have any suggestion on how to 
develop the SugarMail under Windows environment as I'm using Windows XP on my 
laptop right now.
 
Lazim,
 
SugarMail, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SugarMail
OLPC Malaysia, http://olpcmalaysia.blogspot.com
Lazim, http://www.mohdlazim.com
 


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Re: child protection + anti-cheating

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

>
>   > Like instant messaging each other during quizzes?
>
> The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the
> class looking for anyone doing so.  If network access is not needed
> during the quiz, you could also tell the children to turn on "Extreme
> Power Management" in 8.2.0

better yet, tell them to put it away.

Since when is more equipment then a pencil and a sheet of paper
necessary for a school quiz??

JK
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New joyride build 2624

[Build Announcer v2]

http://xs-dev.laptop.org/~cscott/olpc/streams/joyride/build2624

Changes in build 2624 from build: 2623

Size delta: 0.00M

-cerebro 3.0.4-1.olpc3
+cerebro 3.0.5-1.olpc3

--- Changes for cerebro 3.0.5-1.olpc3 from 3.0.4-1.olpc3 ---
  + 3.0.5: Fixed options in initscript

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Re: Fedora Desktop on XO

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Dienstag, den 06.01.2009, 17:31 -0500 schrieb Erik Garrison:
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 10:54:24PM +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> > 
> > On 06.01.2009, at 22:34, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote:
> > 
> > > Carlos Nazareno wrote:
> > >
> > >> Guys, maybe this can help. I whipped up a flash CPU benchmarking tool
> > >
> > > Currently, we are assuming that the issue will be RAM consumption, not
> > > CPU.  I personally have no reason to expect either system to behave
> > > differently in terms of background CPU overhead or cost of common  
> > > operations.
> > 
> > 
> > At 25c3 I bumped into a guy from LXDE. It's said to be a lot lighter  
> > on resources than even XFCE. Unfortunately I did not stay long enough  
> > to see it run on the XO, but maybe someone else did already?

Yes. AFAICS it runs nice and very fast, although/because it is not
feature complete as Gnome or Xfce.

> My impression from playing around with it is that it's significantly
> less polished than Gnome or XFCE.  Polish takes time, users, and
> development... it just seems that LXDE hasn't had enough yet.
> 
> You can just look at the age of the projects:
> 
>   GNOME  1999-03-03 (initial release)
>   XFCE   1996 (project start date)
>   LXDE   2006 (initial release)

This is only partly true since a lot of the LXDE components are older,
for example lxpanel, pcmanfm and openbox.

> [dates pulled from Wikipedia]
> 
> As far as I know all these projects have been under development
> continuously since their inception.  Two, GNOME and XFCE, have had
> extremely large user bases.  It does not seem that LXDE has.

The Xfce user base is not that large as one might think. On the other
hand LXDE is very popular in Asia, for example in Taiwan. In Brasil
several vendors offer netbooks with LXDE and Mandriva preinstalled.

> 
> Erik

Regards,
Christoph

(Fedora package maintainer for both Xfce and LXDE)

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Help me developing for Sugar

[Tomeu Vizoso]

[adding sugar-de...@sugarlabs.org to cc]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:44, master puppetz  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My name is Lazim and I'm a student from Malaysia. I am new in open source
> especially in Sugar development. Regard to my proposal at projectdb, I'd
> like to develop an e-mail client called SugarMail.
>
> I'm not sure whether SugarMail is possible to be developed or not, but my
> proposal is to make SugarMail to be an e-mail client that don't required
> mail server for sending e-mail among XO users. It sound ridiculous, but it's
> not imposible.

Sounds interesting.

> The problem is I don't have enough knowledge about developing a software for
> Sugar and currently I still don't receive my requested XO laptop for me to
> figure out. I've run the Sugar through emulation under the qemu but my
> laptop condition not very good at running 2 operating system simultaneously.

The activity team is being created as we talk, and I expect that
tutorials, welcome irc sessions, etc will be prepared soon. I hope you
will enjoy them and look forward seeing how you develop your activity.

http://sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam

> I would like to ask for anyone that would help me be my mentor on developing
> this SugarMail. I also appreciate if anybody have any suggestion on how to
> develop the SugarMail under Windows environment as I'm using Windows XP on
> my laptop right now.

Easy way to install ubuntu in windows: http://wubi-installer.org/

Regards,

Tomeu


> Lazim,
>
> SugarMail, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SugarMail
> OLPC Malaysia, http://olpcmalaysia.blogspot.com
> Lazim, http://www.mohdlazim.com
>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] Help me developing for Sugar

[Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero]

Hello

My suggestion is that you try working with Ubuntu and install the sugar
packages, they are pretty decent for developing..

Also you can check the new Activity team at sugar labs for resources.

http://sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam


Hope this helps.

Rafael Ortiz


On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 6:44 AM, master puppetz  wrote:

>  Hi,
>
> My name is Lazim and I'm a student from Malaysia. I am new in open source
> especially in Sugar development. Regard to my proposal at projectdb, I'd
> like to develop an e-mail client called SugarMail.
>
> I'm not sure whether SugarMail is possible to be developed or not, but my
> proposal is to make SugarMail to be an e-mail client that don't required
> mail server for sending e-mail among XO users. It sound ridiculous, but it's
> not imposible.
>
> The problem is I don't have enough knowledge about developing a software
> for Sugar and currently I still don't receive my requested XO laptop for me
> to figure out. I've run the Sugar through emulation under the qemu but my
> laptop condition not very good at running 2 operating system simultaneously.
>
> I would like to ask for anyone that would help me be my mentor on
> developing this SugarMail. I also appreciate if anybody have any suggestion
> on how to develop the SugarMail under Windows environment as I'm using
> Windows XP on my laptop right now.
>
> Lazim,
>
> SugarMail, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/SugarMail
> OLPC Malaysia, http://olpcmalaysia.blogspot.com
> Lazim, http://www.mohdlazim.com
>
>
>
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>
>
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Re: child protection + anti-cheating

[Caroline Meeks]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Bryan Berry  wrote:

> cjb wrote:
> > I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers:
> >
> >> How do we protect children from accessing porn or other
> >> questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from
> >> communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC?
> >
> > You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access.
>
> You definitely can w/ dansguardian can filter questionable content. It
> can be quite effective. It does register a lot of false positives
> unfortunately. Dansguardian is quite tunable. DG will still allow access
> to most sites on the Internet. We use it in my office and it is quite
> effective if sometimes annoying.
>

Long term it would be  interesting to  integrate one of the open source
filtering solutions with Moodle so that the teacher could put urls into a
Moodle class/group and the students in that group would automatically have
that site white listed.
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Re: child protection + anti-cheating

[Bryan Berry]

cjb wrote:
> I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers:
> 
>> How do we protect children from accessing porn or other
>> questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from
>> communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC?
> 
> You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access.

You definitely can w/ dansguardian can filter questionable content. It
can be quite effective. It does register a lot of false positives
unfortunately. Dansguardian is quite tunable. DG will still allow access
to most sites on the Internet. We use it in my office and it is quite
effective if sometimes annoying. 

There are probably ways u can block kids from accessing particular irc
svcs. It is interesting to me that on the #olenepal irc channel we have
to refrain from bad language and adult subjects because sometimes kids
from our schools come onto the channel. I really hope they are not
accessing the #molestme or #child_predators_here channels but I may have
to deal w/ this sooner rather than later.

>From a moral perspective, parents and schools have every right to screen
what content their 8 year-olds have access to. There is some highly,
highly toxic stuff on the Internet. We all like to talk about freedom
but would you let your 6 year old daughter walk around a strip club by
herself? probably not.


>> Do we have mechanisms in place for those or best practices to
>> address these concerns?
> 
> "dansguardian" and "squidguard" are free pieces of software that attempt
> to detect questionable content; they are often installed by schools.
> You could ask questions about these on the school server-devel list.
> 
>> How do we prevent cheating between students?
> 
> You can't prevent this.

I am inclined to agree w/ cjb on this, at least in the short term. In
the long-term there could be a lot of different solutions

>> Like instant messaging each other during quizzes?
> 
> The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the
> class looking for anyone doing so.  If network access is not needed
> during the quiz, you could also tell the children to turn on "Extreme
> Power Management" in 8.2.0 (which turns off the wireless radio), and
> then the green wireless LED lights on the front of the XOs should
> remain visibly off for the duration of the quiz.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> - Chris.
> -- 
> Chris Ball   
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Message: 8
> Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:56:53 -0500
> From: "Martin Langhoff" 
> Subject: Re: child protection + anti-cheating
> To: "Chris Ball" 
> Cc: devel@lists.laptop.org, Carlos Nazareno 
> Message-ID:
>   <46a038f90901102056j1d907d3fi3979509b4efdd...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Chris Ball  wrote:
> >   > How do we prevent cheating between students?
> >
> > You can't prevent this.
> 
> Exactly. I've been working with online tools for education for ~8
> years now, and it's interesting to note - paper+pen technology does
> not prevent cheating either.
> 
> A few times I've been confronted with "this cannot possibly be used in
> education until there is no way of cheating with it", ignoring that
> books, pen and paper are *great* for cheating. And also for smuggling
> questionable printed materials into school too -- books and folders
> can hide magazines with porn or political manifestos.
> 
> Ban paper, put anyone who owns a printer in jail :-)
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> 
> martin
> -- 
>  martin.langh...@gmail.com
>  mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Message: 9
> Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:45:04 +0530
> From: "Arjun Sarwal" 
> Subject: Re: Cerebro v3.0: File sharing and buddy management made
>   easy!
> To: "Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos" 
> Cc: Sugar Devel ,
>   vi...@media.mit.edu,OLPC Developer's List 
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> (sugar changed to sugar-devel)
> 
> 2009/1/9 Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos :
> > Want to exchange files between your desktop and your XO laptop? It can't get
> > any easier!
> >
> > In the latest version of Cerebro (currently 3.0.3) you will find simplified
> > file sharing and buddy management. Just click on the buddy you want to send
> > a file to and select a file to send! Screenshots are here:
> > http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Example_GUI
> >
> > If you are a developer, there is detailed tutorial to do file sharing from
> > Python prompt (!) here:
> > http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Buddy_management
> >
> > Enjoy
> > Pol
> >
> 
> This is really fantastic! :-)
> 
> Has anybody gotten the GUI to run...I get an error when I try to run the GUI.
> Anybody who has tried the GUI, please share

Re: child protection + anti-cheating

[Caroline Meeks]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Chris Ball  wrote:

> Hi Carlos,
>
> I hope you don't mind if I give some blunt/opinionated answers:
>
>   > How do we protect children from accessing porn or other
>   > questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from
>   > communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC?
>
> You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access.
>
>   > Do we have mechanisms in place for those or best practices to
>   > address these concerns?
>
> "dansguardian" and "squidguard" are free pieces of software that attempt
> to detect questionable content; they are often installed by schools.
> You could ask questions about these on the school server-devel list.
>
>
>

I think of the filtering system like  a fence around the  school
playground.  In an urban environment would anyone argue there shouldn't be a
fence? For me the target range for Sugar is 3-12. Just like the fence around
the playground at 3, its actually reasonably secure and there is an
expectation that the kid will actually always stay inside the fence.  By 12
its a symbol that tells the child this is a safe place to play, if you walk
out the gate be more careful.

People don't put up barbed wire and locks on the gate just because a 12 year
old might walk out of the school yard at recess.  But the fence is still an
important part of saying this is school and child friendly, this is outside
school and the world of adults.

My son is 16 and attends a public school and over the last couple years
teachers have been trying to use technology more.  He tells the story of a
history teacher trying to show images and by accident running across a
pornographic image during search despite the schools blocking software.  Not
a naked statue, real modern pornography that just happened to show up under
the search terms.  Were these teenagers scared for life? I doubt it.  But it
was slightly disruptive and not a pleasant technology use experience for the
teacher.

Providing an environment where students and teachers can find and use
appropriate materials without wandering unintentionally into inappropriate
materials is a very valid and mostly achievable technical goal for us.

Providing an inescapable environment where the budding young hacker is
prevented from ever escaping into the uncensored internet from any location
is probably neither moral nor achievable.  The good news is our competition
can't do it either.

Cheers,
Caroline
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Re: child protection + anti-cheating

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Hi Carlos,

On 11.01.2009 05:25, Chris Ball wrote:
>> How do we protect children from accessing porn or other
>> questionable content, and how do we prevent malicious persons from
>> communicating with kids, like say, child predators in IRC?
>
> You can't prevent this, if you also want to provide Internet access.
>   

Absolutely agreed.

By the way, a recent sociological study found out that children with
access to unmonitored internet chat are less is danger of becoming
victims of child predators.
Although that sounds strange at first, it it obvious once you consider
the fear of real-world child predators that someone might become aware
of what they do. The "risk" that children tell their online friends
about such predatory behaviour works as a pretty effective deterrent for
real-world predators (which are a much bigger group than online predators).
I can try to dig up that study if you need it for communication with
officials.


>> How do we prevent cheating between students?
>
> You can't prevent this.
>
>> Like instant messaging each other during quizzes?
>
> The easiest way would be to have the teacher stand at the back of the
> class looking for anyone doing so.  If network access is not needed
> during the quiz, you could also [...] turns off the wireless radio
>   

That would work, but kids are smart enough to turn wireless back on and
make the LED light ineffective (with paint/mud). And even if you can
prevent that, the kids can use the camera to look back over their
shoulder and check whether someone is watching them and cheat by
conventional means.

Besides that, there's always the possibility of storing a cheat sheet on
the laptop itself. Good luck trying to find that. A solution for that is
to unpredictably exchange laptops between kids directly before a test,
but it runs against the ownership paradigm.

Someone with enough time and/or money can always cheat. In many
countries, kids have some free time and learning to cheat is probably
the topic with the strongest motivation.

You can't prevent cheating, but you can make it difficult enough that
most kids won't bother.


Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
http://www.hailfinger.org/

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Re: Cerebro v3.0: File sharing and buddy management made easy!

[Arjun Sarwal]

(sugar changed to sugar-devel)

2009/1/9 Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos :
> Want to exchange files between your desktop and your XO laptop? It can't get
> any easier!
>
> In the latest version of Cerebro (currently 3.0.3) you will find simplified
> file sharing and buddy management. Just click on the buddy you want to send
> a file to and select a file to send! Screenshots are here:
> http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Example_GUI
>
> If you are a developer, there is detailed tutorial to do file sharing from
> Python prompt (!) here:
> http://cerebro.mit.edu/index.php/Documentation#Buddy_management
>
> Enjoy
> Pol
>

This is really fantastic! :-)

Has anybody gotten the GUI to run...I get an error when I try to run the GUI.
Anybody who has tried the GUI, please share your steps and results.

thanks!
Arjun

>
> --
> Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos
> Graduate student
> Viral Communications
> MIT Media Lab
> Tel: +1 (617) 459-6058
> http://www.mit.edu/~ypod/
>
>
>
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>



-- 
Arjun Sarwal
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